


Who Needs Disney When You Have Russell Crowe?

by whumphoarder



Series: Adventures at the Stark Lake House [7]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Earache, Fever, Gen, Infection, Pain, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Precious Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Ruptured Eardrum, Sick Peter Parker, Stark Lake House, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Whump, some might say too soft, they're watching Master & Commander, this is soft, tony's snark level is like a 2.5 out of 10 let's just say he's tired okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:41:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24398923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whumphoarder/pseuds/whumphoarder
Summary: When Peter’s ear infection gets a little out of hand, Tony and Morgan have slightly different ideas of how to help.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Adventures at the Stark Lake House [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1614073
Comments: 89
Kudos: 514
Collections: Irondad and his Iron kids





	Who Needs Disney When You Have Russell Crowe?

**Author's Note:**

> Set early in the summer between Peter's freshman and sophomore years of college.
> 
> Thanks to [xxx-cat-xxx](https://xxx-cat-xxx.tumblr.com/) for beta reading and ideas!

Peter wakes to the sound of quiet whimpering.

It takes a few seconds for his groggy brain to register where he is, but the warm glow of the bunny-shaped night light on the opposite wall illuminating the Arendelle toy castle and the pile of stuffed animals on the floor gives it away. He’s in Morgan’s room. Morgan, who insisted on getting a bunk bed for her sixth birthday so that she and Peter could have sleepovers whenever he came to visit. 

Morgan, who is clearly in the midst of a nightmare.

“Mo...” Peter whispers hoarsely. There are a few more quiet, pained whimpers. “Mo,” he tries again, louder. His left ear is throbbing and it’s ridiculously stuffy in this room—he’s actually sweating. Kicking the tangled bed covers off of himself, he lifts a hand to tap the wooden bed frame over his head. She stirs. “Morgan, wake u-up.” His voice cracks on the last word.

Morgan sits up in her bunk. “Yeah?” she asks drowsily. She leans over the edge of bed to look at him, strands of her long hair falling in her face. “What is it?”

She doesn’t seem particularly upset, which Peter finds strange. “Did… did you have a bad dream?” he asks.

In the dim light of the room, he can just make out her curious expression. “I don’t think so.” She swings her legs over the side of the bed and shimmies backwards down the ladder. “Did you?”

“Wh-What?” His ear is ringing, the pain feeling almost bone-deep. There’s another whimper, barely audible.

“You’re crying,” she says simply, perching herself on the edge of his bed. Her brow knits together. “Are you sad?”

Peter wipes the back of his hand roughly across his face and finds it’s wet with tears. It takes a second for his addled brain to realize that she’s right, and then an instant wave of self-consciousness washes over him as he looks into the eyes of the frowning six-year-old. “No, sorry, ‘m fine.” He pushes himself up on his elbows, hurriedly brushing the tears away.

Morgan’s eyes go wide. “You’re bleeding!” she gasps. 

“Huh?” Peter follows her horrified gaze down to the pillow he’s been using. It’s covered in something dark and sticky. Alarmed, he lifts a shaky hand to his throbbing ear and feels more liquid trickling down. “Oh – um – wow, uh...”

“I’m getting Daddy!” Morgan declares, jumping up from the mattress and spinning on her heel. “Hang on!”

“Wait, no, don’t freak him—” 

But she’s already out of the room.

“...out.” With a small groan, Peter carefully sits the rest of the way up and flips the lamp on. The pastel lilac pillowcase is stained with a mixture of blood and yellowish fluid. Grimacing, he grabs some tissues from the box on Morgan’s dresser and dabs them carefully at his dripping ear, hissing sharply at the stabbing pain it causes.

Within a minute, Morgan is back, dragging the hand of a disheveled but surprisingly alert-looking Tony in after her. “See? He’s crying and bleeding out of his ears!” she blurts.

“Just one ear,” Peter corrects, lowering the tissue down to look at the fresh blood and pus on it. “Gross...”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Oh, well in that case I’ll just go back to bed—you’re perfectly fine.” He moves over to the bed, Morgan following close behind. “Anything you wanna share with the class? You take any good hits to the noggin’ recently? Blow something up?”

Peter shakes his head as much as he dares, which only increases the ringing sensation. “No, nothing like that,” he mutters. He _wishes_ this was something cool and Spider-Man related, but he’s pretty sure it’s just his patented Parker Luck™. “Ear started hurting a couple days ago,” he admits. “Thought it would go away.”

Tony pulls out his phone and flips on the flashlight. “Can I see it?”

“Yeah,” Peter says, wincing. He bites his lower lip and does his best to keep as still as possible as Tony peers into his ear with the light.

“What does it look like?” Morgan asks curiously.

“Ugly as hell...” Tony mutters. He flicks the light off and turns to Peter. “Pretty sure you ruptured your eardrum, kiddo.” 

“Ah.” The pain seems to ramp up with the confirmation. That checks out. Certainly _feels_ like someone just bored a hole through his ear. He can feel the fluid dripping out down his cheek. 

Tony must notice it too because he grimaces and pulls a couple more tissues out of the box to hand him. “You know, if you weren’t feeling well, you could have told us that when you got here,” he points out. “Instead of waiting until”—he glances at his lock screen—“3:37 in the morning.”

Peter manages a small smirk. “Gotta keep you on your toes. You know, now that you’re retired and all...”

Looking very unamused, Tony extends a hand and helps pull Peter up to standing. The movement only increases the throbbing in his ear and Peter squeezes his eyes shut tightly against a wave of dizziness.

“Alright?” Tony checks, still gripping his arm tightly. 

“Yeah,” Peter breathes, the ringing growing louder. “Sorry. Just... really hurts.”

“He can have some of my medicine,” Morgan offers in a slightly hushed voice. “The one Mommy gives me when my ears hurt.”

Tony lets out a short laugh. “That’s nice of you, sweetie, but I don’t think grape-flavored Children’s Motrin is gonna cut it here.” He gestures up to the top bunk. “Why don’t you hop back up there and try to sleep some more while I go get Peter fixed up?”

Morgan sticks her lip out in a pout. “But I’m not tired now.”

Instant guilt comes over Peter at having woken her up, but Tony doesn’t miss a beat. 

“Nope, you are, you just forgot,” he says knowingly. He lets go of Peter’s arm for a second to scoop the now quietly giggling six-year-old up and deposit her on the top bunk. “Count some sheep, kid,” he advises, flipping off the lamp and snagging Peter’s ruined pillow to toss in the laundry.

With Morgan situated, Tony guides Peter out of the bedroom and down the stairs. He leaves Peter to clean up in the bathroom before heading to the kitchen in search of some kind of painkiller that might work on an enhanced metabolism.

Eventually, Tony returns with a bottle of Tylenol-Codeine, a glass of water, and an apologetic look. “It’s the strongest stuff we’ve got here. Might take the edge off at least.”

Peter murmurs his thanks and takes the pills, mostly to humor him. They both know it’s a lost cause. He can burn through a dose of morphine in less than ten minutes; there’s no way over-the-counter meds are going to do anything.

“First thing in the morning, I’ll take you to see Bruce,” Tony promises. “We’ll get you on some antibiotics and something better for the pain.”

Peter just hums in response.

Tony sighs. “We can try a heating pad,” he suggests. “That helps Morgan sometimes.”

“Sure.” Peter shrugs, listless. He’ll do anything at this point to make his ear stop aching.

Tony locates the heating pad and gets Peter set up on the chaise section of the couch under a blanket with the heating pad resting on the pillow under his ear. It helps marginally, which is slightly more than Peter can say for the pills.

“Sorry, kiddo. If only you’d known me in the nineties,” Tony says with a sad chuckle. “Could’ve tried all kinds of stuff on you.”

Peter lets out a short, empty laugh. “Yeah, too bad. Sure May would’ve loved that…”

Tony settles down onto the other end of the couch and flips on the TV for distraction. After a bit of channel flipping, he picks a period war drama about a badass sea captain fighting during the Napoleonic Wars, starring Russell Crowe. 

(It was that or “My Strange Addiction” on TLC, and neither of them felt like watching a woman eat a couch).

Peter doesn’t exactly sleep, but he closes his eyes and drifts in and out while the movie plays low in the background. He’s kind of queasy—probably a combination of the otherwise useless drugs and the low grade fever he’s pretty sure he’s got going—but it’s nothing too awful. At least the sounds of cannons firing and battles being waged on screen drown out the incessant ringing in his head.

He isn’t sure how much time passes before a new voice joins the mix in a stage-whisper: 

“Are they gonna cut his arm off?”

Peter’s eyes snap open. He sees Tony dozing on the other end of the sofa, so he sits up a little straighter and turns around to look at the staircase behind him. Sure enough, Morgan is sitting on the fourth step from the bottom, just high enough to see over the couch to the TV. 

“I thought you went back to bed,” Peter whispers. 

Morgan shrugs. “Counting sheep is boring.” She stands up and tiptoes down the rest of the stairs and into the living room. “Are they gonna cut his arm off?” she repeats.

Peter looks back at the movie. The ship’s doctor is in the midst of a rather intense amputation scene on a young boy’s infected arm. “Yeah, looks like it,” he says through a wince. He should probably change the channel to something more child-friendly, but Tony’s got the remote balanced on his knee and he’s all the way on the other end of the sofa. Oh well. 

Morgan nods at the screen, looking impressed. Then she looks back to Peter. “Does your ear still hurt a lot?”

“Nah, it’s not so bad,” Peter lies. “No need to cut it off or anything.” He scoots over on the cushion a bit. “You wanna sit here with me?”

“Yeah.” She nods and hops up onto the couch beside him, snuggling against his right side. “Did Daddy give you medicine?” she inquires. 

“Yeah, he did,” Peter assures.

She nods approvingly. “And did he give you the heater thingy?”

Peter lifts the heating pad up slightly for her to see. “Yep.”

“Good.” She nods again. “And cuddles?”

“Eh…” His gaze drifting to his quietly snoring mentor, Peter smirks a bit. “I think I’m getting too old for those.”

“Everybody needs cuddles,” she says knowingly. Scooting a little closer to him, she wraps her arms around his waist. “See?”

A small smile creeps across Peter’s lips. “Yeah, I see.”

They sit there for a moment, Peter doing his best to focus on the steady pressure of the six-year-old’s gentle squeeze rather than the thumping in his head. It’s almost peaceful.

“Either that, or you need a stick,” Morgan pipes up, breaking the spell.

Peter’s brow furrows. “A stick?”

“To bite down on,” she explains, pointing at the TV. “Like the boy in the movie.”

Peter blinks, then shifts his gaze sideways to the little girl watching nineteenth-century field surgery technique with genuine interest. 

“It’s so he doesn’t scream,” she informs.

Peter holds out his hand. “Just give me the remote, Mo.”

**Author's Note:**

> So this was a little softer than I normally go, but I think we all could use some cuddles these days, ya feel?
> 
> Come and hang out on tumblr if you'd like! My url is [whumphoarder](https://whumphoarder.tumblr.com/)


End file.
